Facebook ‘helped to stir up racial hatred’

FACEBOOK was criticised by United Nations inspectors yesterday in a report which found the social media giant had allowed racial hatred against Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar to continue unchecked.
The investigators further questioned Facebook’s response to numerous earlier allegations, including those by members of the same UN panel in March.

It was accused at the time of allowing itself to be used to incite violence and hatred against the Rohingyas.

The report stated: “Although improved in recent months, Facebook’s response has been slow and ineffective.

“The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined.”

However, Facebook bosses admitted in a statement issued 10 days ago – after an investigation into its failure to combat hate speech against the Rohingya and other Muslims – that it had been “too slow” to address the problem in Myanmar.

The company, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, 34, claimed it had now acted to remedy the situation by hiring more Burmese speakers and investing in technology to identify problematic content.

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Shortly after the UN published its damning report yesterday Facebook removed 18 accounts and 52 pages associated with the Myanmar military. They included the page of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief of the country’s armed forces.

Facebook said in a statement that it had imposed the bans after the UN “found evidence that many of these individuals and organisations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country”.

A spokesman added: “We want to prevent them from using our service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions.”

This is the first time a military or state “actor” has been banned from its platform.